10 Reasons Why Digital Assets Rule the World

What's that you say, you don't know what a digital asset looks like? Hint: you're looking at one now PHOTO:
Dimitar Belchev

Every time you have screen time, digital assets are influencing you. They're driving your thoughts and feelings about the current global political climate, what products you buy, and how you, your friends and your family perceive the world.

These assets come in the form of YouTube videos, Instagram or Flickr photographs, blog posts or playlists on Spotify.

Always On, Always Hungry for More

We consume digital content when we log into LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Digital content glues us to our screens from dawn til dusk. We consume so much on a daily basis that it’s difficult to imagine living life in a different era, one where newspaper, telegraph and mail were primary means of consuming content.

Digital assets are everywhere. They drive your communications and your thought-processes. Digital content may be what goes out the door for publication, but that content stands on the shoulders of digital assets.

10 Reasons Why Digital Assets Rule the World

Here are 10 ways digital assets influence us at every turn, every peek at our iPhones, every time we look at a screen:

Social Influence: Digital assets help create the tweets, videos, product ads and blog posts we read on the web. We consume digital assets to modify or formulate ideas and opinions. We create digital assets to influence the ideas and opinions of others.

Our work and our business: We bring digital assets to life every time we conceive, create, edit, review and publish in our work lives. They are records of business practices, work done, work to be done, and act as proof that we actually did something today.

A record of our existence: Every digital photograph we've taken of every event, birthday, concert, a video of a baby’s first steps, the videos of our vacations — all are digital assets. They are a record of our existence and evidence of our memories.

Criminal evidence: Digital assets act as the primary source materials cited in high profile cases. A murder can be solved with a digital fingerprint in the form of recorded data from Fitbit, or even an Amazon Echo. Photographs on phones can have GPS, time and date data. They provide a digital trail for digital forensic investigators.

Statements to the world:Digital assets are videos edited by one country to send a message to another country. They are also digital notes from conversations/records of conversations and follow ups — things that get subpoenaed in court.

Digital assets can ruin careers and/or lives: They are the last shot in a photo shoot taken just for fun that can potentially end up being quite a big deal.

Inspiring shopping habits:Digital assets drive our product purchases on ecommerce sites such as Amazon.com, Zappos.com, even sometimes referring us to sites through ads. We are constantly being sold things, so subtly sometimes we don’t even realize it’s an ad.

Our emotions:Digital assets can make us laugh. Think of the last funny GIF you saw or maybe a funny fail video on YouTube. They can just as easily also make us sad, depending on the context and content itself.

Creating and strengthening personal connections:Digital assets let us stay in touch through sharing on social platforms.

Spreading news quickly:Digital assets show, not tell, the world when something has happened. Think of the countless videos, livestreams and photographs of the Women’s March, the Science March, or tragic news events. We have immediate access to what events looked like on a scale that newspaper readers of a different era would be blown away by.

So there you have it: 10 reasons why digital assets rule the world today. After that, it's not such a stretch to see why there’s an entire software industry devoted to digital asset and media asset management, is there?

About the Author

Emily is a DAM consultant, marketeer and digital asset manager for Bynder, an award-winning digital asset management software that allows brands to easily create, find and use content, such as documents, graphics and videos.

Before joining Bynder, Emily worked as a digital asset manager for JCPenney.

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